Last fall, we had Ben Felix, chief investment officer and portfolio manager at PWL Capital, and a popular podcaster, on Canadian Advisor.cast. The conversation was wide-ranging, but one point stood out.
“There are just a ton of ETFs being launched in Canada,” he said. “They’re being marketed like crazy to advisors and retail investors. And a lot of these ETFs are, I would say, not great for investors.”
Felix called it “ETF slop,” using a term in heavy rotation since both Merriam-Webster and The Economist named it 2025’s word of the year.
“I agree wholeheartedly,” said Dan Hallett, vice-president, research and principal at HighView Financial Group on this week’s edition of the podcast. “Sadly, I was talking about the very same thing back in the 2000s and late 1990s. … There was something like 2,500 mutual funds available at the time, way too much. Upwards of 90% were not worth investing in.”
